Currently we have the opportunity to get involved in digital distribution of music. This digital consumption of music implies numerous implications for the consumer i.e. the music listener as well as the music producers. This presentation will highlight one of the major findings of my PhD-project that aims to cover these issues using the industry darling Spotify as a lens, the advent of a musical cyborg.
Spotify offers streamed music, which briefly means that the music can be accessed rather than owned. In digital setting attached to this access model the consumer is no longer a passive receptor of a product. Instead the consumers are an inevitably part of the musical assortment range and even participate in the development of the Spotify product. The consumer could even be regarded as a co-creator of the musical piece given the opportunities that digital contexts offer.
The product of Spotify is regarded as a market place, a polis. This market place is explored due to its actors, where, when and how it can be accessed, what type of goods are offered at the market place; musical pieces, systematic archive system, play lists, personal suggestions of new music, social dimensions of shared musical experiences and so on. The flow and exchange of currency is also investigated, as identity of the user becomes a currency for free usage of musical services. The polis, is also investigated in regard to an agora where social and negotiating aspects of a musical product takes place e.g. the sharing and recommending of music. These actions by the digital music consumer suggests the advent of a musical cyborg, a human digital life form manifested in the usage of smart algorithms used for intelligent recommendation of music is based on data that the user puts into the digital system. Hence, digital music consumption is undoubtedly pushing musical humans towards musical cyborgs as digital presence in physical life is twisted towards physical presence in digital life.